Rare sea creature wiggles onto Seattle dock

A ribbon seal in its natural habitat. (Photo by Michael Cameron, NOAA)

A furry surprise straight from the arctic recently showed up in a South Seattle woman’s yard about a mile near the mouth of the Duwamish River.

Stretched out sleeping on her dock was a ribbon seal, usually found swimming in the icy waters off the coats of Alaska and Russia.

This is only the second time a ribbon seal has been spotted this far south, and the sighting stumped wildlife officials at first.

“I thought, ‘That’s an interesting-looking creature,'” Matthew Cleland of western Washington’s WSDA office told OurAmazingPlanet. “I had no idea what it was.”

Peter Boveng, head of the National Marine Mammal Laboratory’s Polar Ecosystems Program, told the site the sighting was unusual. (Snowy owls have also been appearing around the Seattle area lately.)

The ribbon seal, which Boveng identified as an adult male, “looked to be in really good shape,” he said. “We don’t have any way to rule out other possibilities, but I’d say it’s almost certain that it swam there.”

Satellite tracking studies have revealed that ribbon seals do sometimes make it as far as the north Pacific Ocean, south of the Aleutian islands, but much about the species remains mysterious. Because they spend so much of their lives in the open water, it’s a challenge to track them.

The ribbon seal spotted in Seattle was an adult male, according to Boveng. It hasn’t been spotted since last week.